Disputes may delay OSU's $780 million medical-center expansion

Debate about Ohio State University's $780 million medical-center expansion will mean that it likely won't be completed on time.

Debate about Ohio State University's $780 million medical-center expansion will mean that it likely won't be completed on time.

Uncertainty over the project's direction — including debates between officials of the university's medical center and its cancer hospital — probably will delay the project past its target completion date of 2011, a top school official said yesterday.

Experts hired to examine the plans for the medical center also said the infighting could hurt both medical programs, keeping top doctors and scientists away.

Now, the sides will work together to try to patch up differences, said William Shkurti, Ohio State's senior vice president for business and finance.

It's too soon to say when the project will be completed, Shkurti said. But he is "cautiously optimistic" things will work out in the debate about how the OSU Medical Center and the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital will fare in the expansion.

"This is the biggest capital project the university has ever engaged in," he said. "You expect to have challenges."

The original plan included con- struction of a new cancer hospital, expansion of the medical center and heart hospital, and construction of new parking areas and additional faculty offices.

Resolving differences between the medical-center and cancer hospital's backers was a key recommendation from two consulting firms the university hired in the spring to calm worried cancer-hospital donors.

The two firms, Deloitte & Touche in Detroit and Hammes Co. of Brookfield, Wis., were paid a combined $772,500 to review the relationship between the medical center and the cancer hospital. Their reports were turned in this week.

Both firms singled out the problem of infighting, which could discourage "topnotch faculty and scientists" from joining either medical program, the Hammes report said. Deloitte & Touche said "sufficient dissent and concern exists," and recommended that the groups work to build "the necessary alignment in order to proceed effectively."

Shkurti shared the firms' findings with Joseph Alutto, OSU's interim president and provost, in a letter this week. Shkurti, along with medicalcenter officials and cancercenter leaders, are scheduled to report progress to the OSU Board of Trustees at its meeting on Sept. 21.

The firms were hired after donors wrote to former OSU President Karen A. Holbrook expressing concern over the direction of the construction project being led by Dr. Fred Sanfilippo, the medical center's chief executive. In July, Sanfilippo announced his plans to leave Ohio State this fall to become head of health sciences at Emory University in Atlanta.

Donors feared the project could jeopardize the James' status as a National Cancer Institute certified cancer hospital — and millions of dollars in Medicare reimbursements.

But university leaders are working to change the governance structure of the cancer hospital to assure that it keeps it status as a certified center. James officials now report directly to OSU's top administrators, instead of Sanfilippo.

Thanks in part to that move, Dr. David E. Schuller, senior executive director of the James, said he was optimistic the sides could resolve their differences.

"I think the donors are very energized by the decision relative to separation of the cancer program," he said, referring to the change in governance.

Wiley W. Souba, interim chief executive of the medical center, could not be reached for comment.